Friday Reflections is all about reflecting on the week by observing our senses. My hope is that this will be a gentle, easy way to tune into how we are doing and what we are experiencing weekly when journaling in general can feel so daunting.

Now, for this week’s Friday Reflections (with each sense as your inspiration, consider how experiencing it impacted your week).

Our friend, MK, brought us this chicken when we were first home with baby boy and it is the ultimate comfort food. We had a crazy dark stormy night this weekend so Happy and I put together this dish for dinner with brown rice and steamed broccoli. Here is the recipe.

Place chicken in lined (to make cleaning easier) 9 by 13 pan. Mix soup and sour cream. Pour over chicken. Melt butter and mix with cracker crumbs and poppy seeds. Sprinkle on top of chicken. Bake at 375 for 30-45 minutes.

hearing :: Howling wind, crazy rain.

smelling :: Coconut. Coconut body butter and coconut oil everywhere.

seeing :: All things brown and black. Happy heard friends at school say they don’t like the colors black and brown and then told me he wasn’t going to like them anymore either. Since something as simple as not liking two colors in your crayon box can morph beyond that, we have spent this weel naming everything we love that is brown or black (including our hair and skin color!). We’ll keep celebrating all colors, especially black and brown, because there’s nothing more important than loving what you’ve been given.

feeling :: nervous excited to start a month of travel. Excited because I am doing some fun, inspiring things– speaking at UNC-W on Monday about Growing Up Latina, celebrating my nephew’s birthday in Charleston, seeing one of my best friends become a Colonel in the US Army in Washington DC, speaking about self-acceptance as part of Eating Disorder Awareness Week in Charlotte and Connecticut (where I get to see one of my favorite people from high school), and maybe even taking a trip to speak in New York. The unfun part, for me, is the flying.

wishing/hoping :: for a smooth, wonderful kick-off to Circle de Luz’s Run Big Dream Big IV. Oh and a great football game on Sunday since it is the last hurrah of football season for me.

What about you? What were your sensational experiences this week? Please share!

A Leporello is a kind of folded booklet in which you can put photographs. The one we received is absolutely gorgeous!

For carnival, the children could disguise on 4 days! Speak about happy children! On one day, they all had to be disguised as birds, as the name of the Kindergarten has something to do with birds. It was so great, 40 colourful children “flying” around, all different and everybody happy! A great symbol for beauty: they were beautiful because they were unique, and enriched the whole picture of their very own way…
And I was thrilled to create such a costume!